Yonatan Urich vs. Eli Feldstein: 'Is that from a senior security official?'

Photo: Yehoshua Yosef, Avshalom Shoshoni, Flash 90. Yonatan Urich vs. Eli Feldstein: 'Is that from a senior security official?' Eliyahu Amar, 14 minutes ago. Hours after the State Attorney’s Office announced it was filing an indictment against Yonatan Urich in the “Bild affair,” Eli Feldstein posted a message in which he tried to jab at Urich while quoting the prime minister’s famous video defending Feldstein. Urich, of course, did not stay silent and replied: “Good one, bro, is that from a senior political source or a senior security official?”

The State Attorney’s Office filed a revised indictment today, Thursday, in the classified documents affair, in which the prime minister’s adviser, Yonatan Urich, was added as a defendant alongside Eli Feldstein and reserve soldier Ari Rosenfeld. Shortly afterward, a social media exchange of barbs developed between two of the people involved in the case.

Feldstein published a response post in which he wrote, in a jab paraphrasing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s famous video: “I know Yonatan Urich, he is an Israeli patriot, a fervent Zionist, there is no chance in the world he would ever do anything deliberately to endanger the security of the state.” But the post immediately prompted a response from Urich, who chose a brief jab: “Good one, bro, is that from a senior political source or a senior security official?” His words, of course, referred to the method Feldstein used while working for the prime minister, when he would publish things, sometimes apparently even false ones, in the name of a “senior security official.”

According to the revised indictment filed this morning, Urich is charged with conveying a secret document with intent to harm state security, conveying a secret document, possessing a secret document, and destroying evidence. The State Attorney’s Office says Urich and Feldstein worked to publish classified information in the newspaper Bild, even though they knew military censorship had prohibited its publication in Israel. It was also alleged that Feldstein, in coordination with Urich, passed unauthorized parties information he had received from Rosenfeld, and that the acts led to the exposure of a secret intelligence method and its capabilities in a way that could have harmed Israel’s security interests. In addition, the prosecution says that the day after Feldstein and Rosenfeld were arrested, Urich replaced his mobile phone without transferring the messages from the previous device, in order to prevent them from being seized as evidence.

At the same time, the prosecution asked to impose restrictions on Urich until the end of the proceedings, including a ban on contact with the people involved in the case, including prosecution witnesses. Among the prosecution witnesses on the list is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with a series of other senior figures in the security and public diplomacy systems. Later, the court rejected the prosecution’s request.